Darkside Detective: A Fumble in the Dark - Case 1 Missing, Presumed Darkside
I wanted to get this out sooner, but things simply did not align. Also, I was not expecting the first case of the game to go this long.
Where we last left off, Dooley disappeared and now McQueen has to find him. We partner up with Raxa and see other faces from the first game, but things have changed in Twin Lakes, and possibly not for the better. Luckily, our dynamic duo are back in the game and surely they can restore everything to working order! ... https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aX9DDiu6kFg
Welcome to the mechanic that breaks the game. These are optional missions you can take on for rewards, and the later ones are supposed to hold secrets, meaning you will want to do them to get the most out of a playthrough. In doing them, the level of the party will increase, making you stronger than normal for the story segments. Since there are no random battles in the game, this is the only way to get additional levels and money. Depending on what those later secrets entail exactly could be even more breaking...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NG9UzqULHjk
I hope you've taken good notes on how to manipulate the AI as this is where everything will come into play.
Nell has triple your resources from the start, and Andy has a close position to fight you in a land war. Unless you can swiftly remove one of them, they will overwhelm you as there simply isn't a way to compete. Even if you want to do artillery shenanigans with Grit, they will build planes and finish you off.
So our strategy here is to bring someone with good transport units, and I prefer Sami to be honest. The goal is to slip through all of the holes in Nell's defenses and exploit that the AI leaves their HQs undefended. With careful movement, we can drop an infantry in range and cap quickly, reverting all of those resources to us.
Once you have Nell's stuff, overwhelming Andy should be a breeze. You have the economy to field those heavy hitting units that few can afford, and you can buy multiples of them per turn. Even with her innate penalties, you can simply overwhelm Andy with quantity of higher tier units, similar to how Colin fights. You need to really hammer him to make up for the loss of power score from sneaking Nell's base, and if you are careful with your stuff, you can still have a comfortable amount of technique in the end.
I am not really a fan of missions like these, but I guess they give a lot more purpose to Sensei and Sami. Sadly, the next few aren't the greatest either as they are more demonstrations of new features for this game rather than being legitimate challenges. That will be changing slightly as we go on, but just don't set your sights too high.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3zVgPPd05ag
In order to reach our enemy, we must cross a body of water. The group suggests the best way to get across is to wade through the shallows, but an enemy fortification is between us and them, so we will need to smash it. Of course, we will have reinforcements spawn in, so you all know who to expect.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JAFvAjx-lrQ
In order to open up the final dungeon, we need to tackle a handful of smaller dungeons using cameo characters first. They are all similar in layout, with different enemies to be found, and the groups have different strengths and weaknesses. Force your way through the five sections, and we can enter the final stretch.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OdTGarsCXZo
I briefly refer to some of the censoring done in this chapter, as I knew it was coming, but I am still a little stunned at what all they've done here. It will be a later chapter where I go into even more detail, so stay tuned.
Otherwise, the things that changed here is that I believe the cigars have become jerky, the alcohol have become other items, and a piece of equipment was changed in a way that did not make any sense. With the way the characters curse and swear here, I wonder if the alcohol and tobacco would really change the rating. Then the devs changing the underwear item to a diary makes even less sense...
As for the premise of this chapter, we play as a wanted gunman (hence the Trigun jokes) being pursued by a bounty hunter. The two stumble upon a town being terrorized and band together to save the people. We have to scramble for the items that are lying around here to come up with a plan to reduce the number of enemies to something we can manage. This is important as you can see that O. Dio can easily one-shot these guys. There are no level-ups here, and the equipment is extremely limited, so you need to make the most of what little you have to pull through. Ultimately, it gives us one of the shorter and simpler chapters in the game.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TzL6b00AdLs
This was an experimental build where I am trying to find something for the HBG that works. The gimmick here was getting the Focus skill to increase charge rate, and in turn boost my elemental damage. Summary is it failed and I am back at the drawing board to figure out if something can work. To make things worse, the HBGs that I do like are all WyvernSnipe, so I have no variation to call upon. I may be forced to make the Rampage one and see if I can get something there that works.
As for Tobi-Kadachi, I am bringing the water rounds since he is weak to it and I think Blue is using a water axe. His tail can break, but it is not able to be cut off, meaning we don't need to hard focus it. I do not believe he has a plate, so there is no need to grind him out any further than necessary. If you want to use a thunder weapon though, you will most likely need his materials as Khezu can only take you so far.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QNRzFw3258Y
This is just a quest to fill out the list for me. Goss Harag offers nothing that I need, but he is a decent fight once you have your end game equips. Stay fast on your feet and avoid his weapon attacks and he is fairly tame. Due to my Pierce rounds, I can tear through his weapons, but it is possible that other weapon types may have trouble breaking them.
As of this video being released, there are even better armor sets for Great Sword users out there, so I can understand people not using this at all. For the release version it was probably decent, but it has fallen off from where it used to be.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dM1A4xjfSfI
I don't get all of the sidequests here as I intentionally left off Khonsu, who will most likely be in the next video when I aim to wrap up ALL sidequests available. To make up for his omission, we will instead be whacking Cleopatra, someone I should have hit earlier due to how crazy Frolic is.
With Cleo on the chopping block first, make sure you are protected against Bufu, Hama, and Charm as those are the three things she will lob at you. Being able to use Dekunda can also help significantly as it will offset the Frolic debuffs. Upon defeating her, you can either stop her suicide to get her to join you, or let her go if you're not interested. I will be fusing her again later since the Prayers I've accumulated will make her ridiculous once she bridges any level gaps.
After that, we whack Abaddon who doesn't really have much going for him. I just need to show up and smack him around and down he goes. Baal is in a similar spot in that he doesn't have anything as annoying as Frolic.
However, things change when we reach the Garuda who was probably meant to be fought after I deal with the rival Nahobinos judging from his level alone. He loves to play with evasion and depending on the exact numbers going on under the hood, may be more evasive than anything we've encountered until now. Either Dekaja, Sukunda, or Blinding Strike is necessary to bring him back into line. As long as we can hit him, we can try to drag this into a battle of attrition, but due to the level gap, he is still going to hit extremely hard for this stage of the game, so make sure you can heal or cut into his damage somehow.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tlAPqUgMt4E
Here we reach the Route D, which is yet another double cross of sorts. We are barraged with familiar faces as we seek to be the last ones standing. And in the end, I am suspecting my theory about Route C and D being the Narm route...
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EVXd-47jrxo